Dave Pajo

Aerial M is a collective of about ten people that had already released a couple of singles, Napoleon/Safeless (1995) and In The Thirteenth Letter (1995), as well as the split Vol De Nuit (All City, 1996), under the name M—the original title of the collaboration between guitarist Dave Pajo (Slint, For Carnation) and drummer Ray Rizzo.

Pajo is the mastermind behind the project. Dave Pajo began his career as the guitarist for the Maurice, a hardcore quartet from Louisville, Kentucky, second only to Squirrel Bait in influence. In 1986 the band dissolved, and Pajo joined Slint. He later played with Palace and eventually with Tortoise.

The instrumental album Aerial M (Drag City, 1997) continues these projects, now with Pajo accompanied by half his family (Fernando, Darlene, and Dawn) and a host of friends, including Will Oldham of Palace Brothers, Dan Koretzky, and Laurence Bell. But the project is Pajo’s vision—a meticulous, introverted guitarist who imagines slow, solemn instrumental music to be savored carefully, each chord fully appreciated; a sub-sub-ambient sound bordering on "slo-core," the sleepiest acid rock, and the semi-classical arrangements of Rachel’s; the instrumental equivalent of Tim Buckley’s singing.
The cryptic melodies of Dazed And Awake are fractured almost minimalistly, mechanically organized around Pajo’s indifferent picking. His "cubist" experimentation extends to the faint, structureless pulse of Wedding Song No 2, where the melody seems to stumble as if a recording glitch occurred. Pajo can reach manic levels of cerebral intensity precisely when embracing the humblest lo-fi ethos. The mathematical scales of AASS even evoke Bach’s "Art of Fugue." Yet Pajo also constructs refined atmospheres, as when he caresses cocktail-lounge jazz of noir films and Morricone’s semiotic soundtracks in Skrag Theme.
In the end, the tender finale of Always Farewell is rooted in Kentucky traditions, country fables, and campfire ballads, filtered through the transcendent sensibility of a John Fahey, giving this sound painter’s personal vision a metaphysical quality. Despite the impressive number of collaborators, all of the wordless romances on this record remain extremely austere.

Post Global Music (Drag City, 1998) is more than just a remix album and includes four versions of Wedding Song No 3.

Pajo outdoes himself on the next album, credited to Papa M: Live From A Shark Cage (Drag City, 1999). His minimalist and transcendental technique, equally inspired by Pat Metheny (jazz), Robert Fripp (rock), and John Fahey (folk), reaches an extraordinarily high level of concentration. Pajo achieves a magical balance between technique, emotion, and structure.
Roadrunner is a country watercolor reminiscent of Leo Kottke, but the melodious tinkle of the guitar (evoking Christmas carols), the muted counterpoint of a jaw harp, the tapping of the percussion, and the vibraphone chimes carry none of the carefree joy of the countryside; rather, they convey the somber introspection of the metropolis. Even the accelerated blues of Plastic Energy Man, again strummed on guitar (almost in a calypso style) and accompanied by restrained percussion, oscillates between graceful fantasy and a troubled psyche.
The most "song-like" track on the album is Up North Kids, a catchy, rhythmic melody that, for a moment, seems to forget all existential torment.
From that (more or less) fairytale atmosphere, the listener is plunged into the sibylline trance of Pink Holler, a velvety carpet of crystalline guitar and banjo touches that does not follow a melody but instead thickens progressively. The journey continues into the long raga of Drunken Spree, which repeats a simple sitar pattern intertwined with intensely spiritual guitar chords. Over the fifteen minutes of I Am Not Lonely With Cricket, Pajo fully immerses himself in the minimalist technique of endlessly repeating a simple pattern with subtle variations, and in the Eastern approach of achieving ecstasy through hypnotic stasis and intense meditation. The music evolves slowly, dissolving into a tinkle of metallic tones.
The closing track, Arundel, merges these two facets of Pajo—the melodic vignettist and the spiritual guru—into a slow, mournful theme that resembles a requiem fading into swirling, gloomy reverberations.
This album crowns the most taciturn guitarist in the history of rock music as one of the most original. His music is patient, does not hark for the spectacular and abhors speed. His music is built up from a hammering technique of the guitar which could not possibly be more ordinary. Nonetheless, the result is an extraordinary mixture of cubist, baroque and eastern accents.

Over the course of his career, Pajo has pursued and invented a compositional style that is a blend of cubist painting and Bach’s "Art of the Fugue".

David Pajo is hard to recognize on the EP Papa M Sings (Rock Action, 2001), a collection of lo-fi folk and blues songs a` la Will Oldham (I of Mine, London Homesick Blues).

After releasing two milestone recordings of instrumental music, Dave Pajo (the genius behind Papa M) turned to singing with an EP that was (at best) a failed experiment. The album Whatever, Mortal (Drag City, 2001) shows that he has vastly improved his singing and that he has struck the right balance between his instrumental skills (he plays everything, helped out only by Will Oldham and Tara Jane O'Neil) and the song format. On the one hand, Pajo nods to the classics: Over Jordan, the tale of a modern Ulysses returning home, and the solemn ode of Roses In The Snow could easily be two of Leonard Cohen's whispered elegies (the former framed by a melancholy melody that John Denver would have loved). The mellow, tender, dreaming tone of early Donovan permeates Sorrow Reigns. And Glad You're Here With Me is a little reminiscent of Bob Dylan's Blowing In The Wind. On the other hand, Pajo is a master of musical detail and disguise, using minimal arrangements to expand his tunes in all directions: the eerie reverbs of the guitar enhance Beloved Woman (worthy of Luna), the piano pens the medieval lullaby of The Lass Of Roch Royal, and a small chamber orchestra performs the album's glorious, quasi-anthemic finale Northwest Passage.
While the songs constitute the essense of the album, Pajo still delight us with a few instrumental tracks. Focusing on his subliminal strumming, that borrows from both avantgarde techniques and country fingerpicking styles, the surreal, rocking Krusty and the organ-drenched Tamu hint at metaphysical issues that even Pajo's erudite lyrics could not adequately express with words.
But the best display of Pajo's technical subtleties comes with the psychedelic raga Sabotage, the longest track on the album and the least centered on a melody. Here one can appreciate how Pajo has truly found his "voice" at multiple levels. This album is where post-rock and alt-country meet and form something new, that is both tradition and experiment, confession and vision.

The EP Songs of Mac Performed By Papa M (september 2001 - Western Vinyl, 2002) contains two lengthy "songs" that rank among his best.

The anthology Hole of Burning Alms (Drag City, 2004) collects the singles credited to M and some rarities from 1995-2000. Pajo's first single credited to M was the wavering post-rock instrumental Napoleon (Drag City, 1995), with Ray Rizzo on drums, two guitars and a bass, backed with the slo-core instrumental Safeless. M's hypnotic Vol De Nuit, a duet between Pajo and Rizzo, was contained in the single In The Thirteenth Letter (All City, 1996), and had a lazy country feel. M Is (Drag City) contained Wedding Song No 3, which unleashes a dense, martial crescendo, and Mountains Have Ears, a Brian Eno-esque vignette with an electronic beat. By this time, M had become a solo Pajo project. October (Drag City) returned to convoluted post-rock textures with Vivea. Travels in Constants (Temporary Residence) was another experiment with the techno beat.

Pajo (Drag City, 2005) continues Pajo's evolution towards the traditional singer-songwriter profession. High Lonesome Moan, Manson Twins, Baby Please Come Home increasingly focus on the singer's psyche rather than on the singer's aesthetic vision. Alas, there was only one Pajo, but there are thousands of singer-songwriters and of Nick Drake imitators.

1968 (Drag City, 2006) was another linear, streamlined, conventional batch of songs. As a songwriter, Pajo stands out only when he blends seamlessly dark stories and celestial atmospheres (Cyclone Eye, Who's That Knocking, Wrong Turn).

Dave Pajo's Scream With Me (Black Tent Press, 2009) was a collection of acoustic covers of Misfits songs.

In 2015 Pajo attempted suicide and then he almost died in a motorcycle accident. He resurrected the Papa M moniker for the 27-minute mini-album Highway Songs (2016) and A Broke Moon Rises (2018), which contains only five songs. They both sound like collections of (somewhat cryptic) experiments in different directions. The latter contains the longer ones, both acoustic guitar solos, the lively eight-minute folk dance of A Lighthouse Reverie and the 13-minute, dejected, anemic Spiegel im Spiegel. They are post-rock's version of John Fahey's transcendental fantasias. Papa M's music has become not so much "dark", but menacing and inscrutable despite being fragile.